Blind Pursuit (9 page)

17

“I’d like to report a missing person.” Annie sat rigid at her desk in the office at the back of her shop, clutching the telephone handset, fighting for calm.

“Adult or juvenile?” the T.P.D. desk sergeant asked with mechanical perfunctoriness.

“Adult. My sister. She—”

“Please hold.”

Silence. She stared at a green spray of rhododendron, blooming pink, and hoped she could keep her voice dry of tears.

What time was it, anyway? After three o’clock. Three hours had passed since she’d learned Erin was missing.

Should have called her last night, Annie thought. Should have trusted my intuition. Now it may be too late.

A murmur of voices bled through the door. Someone in the front room—customer or supplier or delivery person—talking with her assistant. She hoped nothing had come up that required her supervision. There had been enough interruptions as it was.

Since returning from her abortive lunch date, all she had wanted to do was pursue her strategy for finding Erin, carrying out a desperate quest via telephone, but there had been constant distractions.

First, she’d had to sign for a delivery of flowers and greens from a local grower; she made such purchases every day to keep her inventory fresh. Then an importer had called to inquire about her need for exotics. Precious minutes had been wasted talking to him.

At two o’clock a local restaurant, one of her regular customers, had faxed an order for a grand arrangement to serve as a centerpiece at a private dinner party tonight. Though it had been hard to concentrate, she’d had to design the bouquet herself, a complex mingling of spring flowers—azaleas, star magnolias, grape hyacinth, Passionale daffodils, and the quintessential seasonal bloom, the primrose.

Through it all a stream of customers had flowed into the shop, many with requests requiring her personal attention. Ordinarily she would have been happy to hear the cash register ring with such exuberance. Today she had other things on her mind.

“Walker, Detective Division.”

The male voice, quietly authoritative, matched her preconception of how a cop should sound.

“Detective? My name is Anne Reilly. I want to report a missing person. My sister, Erin.”

“How long has she been missing?”

“Since this morning, at least.”

“This morning? That’s not a great deal of time. Normally we wait twenty-four hours—”

“No, you can’t wait that long. She’s in trouble. I ... I know she is.”

Oh, good, Annie. Very composed. Why not just burst into sobs and throw yourself on his mercy?

“Take it easy, Ms. Reilly.”

She was grateful for his understanding tone. “Call me Annie.”

“All right, Annie. I’m Michael. Michael Walker. Now tell me, how old is your sister?”

“My age. Thirty. We’re twins.”

“Identical twins?”

“No, not identical. We don’t even look that much alike. She’s tall, I’m short, she’s beautiful, I’m not—we’re opposites.” She realized she was babbling and shut up.

“Is Erin dealing with any personal difficulties that you know of? Depression? Dissatisfaction with her job, her social life?”

“She was feeling fine. I talked to her just yesterday. We made a date for lunch. She never showed up. And she’s not in her apartment or her office—”

“What sort of work does she do?”

“She’s a psychologist. She’s missed all her appointments today. Her car is gone, and nobody knows where she is.”

“Have you been to her home?”

“Yes. She’s not there.”

“Perhaps you could try contacting some of her friends—”

“I’ve done that. I’ve been doing it all afternoon. I took her Rolodex with me when I left her apartment building. For three hours I’ve been on the phone. I called all her friends, her doctor, her dentist, her ophthalmologist, the service station that works on her car, her travel agent, the shelter where she does pro bono work on the weekends, the clinic where she interned, the U. of A. professors she’s kept in touch with, the president of the local branch of the American Psychotherapy Association—”

“What about relatives?”

“We don’t have any.”

“No family at all? Not even out of state?”

“None anyplace.”

“I see.” Walker sounded uncomfortable, as if sensing he’d raised a painful issue. “Her patients, then?”

“One of her associates at work has been making those calls. It has to be handled delicately—you know, not to alarm these people. They depend on Erin.”

“Of course. You realize it’s possible she’s tried to reach you by phone and couldn’t get through. It sounds as if the line has been tied up for hours.”

“I’m using my private office line. If she wanted to talk to me, she could call my shop’s listed number. Or my message machine at home. She hasn’t. I’ve been checking my messages every fifteen minutes.”

“Does Erin have any medical problems?”

“Epilepsy.”

“Frequent seizures?”

“No. She takes medication. She hasn’t had a seizure since we were teenagers.”

Walker hesitated. “There are other possibilities—”

“Like a car accident? I thought of that. Called the Tucson P.D. traffic division right away. Later I tried the highway patrol, the sheriff’s department, even the tribal police on the reservations. Nothing.”

“Hospitals—”

“Phoned every one in the county. Gave them Erin’s name and description. She’s not there. She’s not
anywhere
.”

“All right, Annie. It sounds as if you’ve been very thorough, but there are a few avenues I can explore before we proceed any further. Give me a description of your sister and the car she was driving. Then let me have ten or fifteen minutes, and I’ll get back to you.”

Annie supplied the information, left her number with him, and hung up. Immediately she called Erin’s apartment again. The message machine answered. She thumbed the phone’s reset button, waited for a dial tone, then used the memory feature to call her own home number.

An irritatingly chipper voice—her voice on tape—greeted her.

“Hi, this is Annie. I’m not home right now, so if you’re a burglar, I’m in trouble. If you need to leave a message, please wait for the tone and then talk. Bye.”

She punched in a two-digit code that activated the playback mechanism. Three beeps answered. No messages.

Annie cradled the phone, then paced the office. Out front, a customer—it sounded like Mrs. Garcia—was saying something about forsythia. Annie thought she really ought to go out and help; Mrs. Garcia was notoriously demanding and it seemed unfair to let her assistant handle the order alone. But she was unwilling to leave the telephone unattended for even a minute, afraid of missing Walker’s call ... or Erin’s.

Ten or fifteen minutes, Walker had said. She flipped through Erin’s Rolodex, hunting for any likely name she might have overlooked. No, she’d called them all.

It didn’t make
sense
. A car accident, a seizure—horrible though it was, an explanation of that kind was comprehensible. But for Erin to simply vanish, car and all, without a word or a trace—

The phone rang. Instantly she snatched it up. “Yes?”

“Walker here. I’m afraid the couple of things I tried didn’t pan out either.”

“What did you do?”

“Called the supervising officer of the MAC team—that’s M-A-C, Mobile Acute Crisis. They respond to reports of disturbed or disoriented individuals. Mostly transients, but sometimes you get a person who’s suffered a seizure or a stroke. Anyway, they haven’t encountered your sister. Then I tried the city and county jails—”

“The
jails
?” That idea never would have occurred to her.

“Anything can happen. But Erin isn’t incarcerated. And you’ll be relieved to hear that the coroner’s office knows nothing about her either.”

“Thank God.” The morgue was another possibility she hadn’t considered, or perhaps hadn’t wanted to consider.

“You said she doesn’t suffer from chronic epileptic fits? That it’s been years since the last one?”

“That’s right.”

“She hasn’t reported being harassed or stalked?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

“And you saw no indication of depression?”

“She was fine, like I told you. What are you saying, anyway? You think she committed suicide?”

“I haven’t suggested anything of the kind.”

“She isn’t suicidal. Erin’s tough. A fighter. She always keeps it together, never lets things overwhelm her, get the better of her. Unlike me.”

“What’s so objectionable about you?”

“I’m not exactly a cool head in a crisis ... as I guess you’ve noticed.”

“I’d say you’ve handled yourself exceptionally well. You’ve done everything I would have done in your place.”

The compliment buoyed her, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to accept it. “You wouldn’t have been fighting back tears the whole time.”

He didn’t answer that. “You said you looked in Erin’s apartment. I take it you’ve got a key.”

“Sure.”

“Her place is a rental unit? Manager on duty?”

“Till five-thirty.”

“Why don’t we meet there? I’d like to check it out for myself. I don’t have a warrant, but if your sister gave you free access, and the manager approves—”

“She will. She’s as worried as I am. Well, almost.”

“Can you get to Erin’s place in half an hour?”

“Yes. The address—”

“I already know it. I punched up her M.V.D. file. I’ll meet you there at four-fifteen.”

Click, and a dial tone buzzed in her ear.

Half an hour would be just enough time to get there. She had to hurry.

Mrs. Garcia had already left when Annie entered the front room. Just as well; Annie had no time for one of the woman’s interminable monologues on the health and well-being of her dachshund, Snoops.

Despite her haste and worry, she took a moment’s pleasure in the familiar clutter of her shop. It was a small place, what most people would refer to as a hole in the wall—but it was
her
hole in the wall, brought into existence out of her imagination, investment, and work, and she loved it more dearly than anything in her life, except Erin.

Hanging plants in wicker baskets dangled from ceiling hooks, trailing long leafy stems. Barrels of silk flowers and other artificial greenery flanked the counter, setting off displays of dried flowers in bunches and wreathes. In a walk-in cooler along one wall, bouquets and nosegays sprouted from glass and ceramic vases. Scattered around the room, half hidden in a jungle of green, were odd treasures—teddy bears, chocolates, dried fruits, greeting cards.

But what she cherished above all were not silk flowers, not dried flowers, not flowers tucked away in a humidified and refrigerated cabinet, but living blossoms in the open air, fragrant and alluring, inviting every customer to smell and touch. The shop was crowded almost to bursting with blue dwarf asters, sweet violets, orchids, bell-like lilies of the valley, carnations in rainbow assortments, painted daisies, towering stalks of hollyhock. The perfumes of countless blooms mingled in an aromatic medley.

Breathing in those scents, Annie remembered an evening, five years ago, when she had stood outside the storefront in the late summer twilight, gazing up at a gaudy canopy, newly installed. SUNRISE FLOWERS, it said, a reference to the store’s location in a suburban shopping plaza on Sunrise Road and, less prosaically, to the wordless sense of hope that always seemed to rise in her with the sun.

Hope had been all she’d had at the beginning, and not very much of it either. From the start she had feared that the enterprise was doomed. Surely she was too much of a scatterbrain to run her own business.

She’d had a plan, though, a way to set her shop apart from the competition. Though she’d offered all the conventional merchandise and services provided by any florist, she had gone a step further by specializing in a variety of exotic plants, hard to find in this part of town.

From the beginning her ads in the newspapers and the Yellow Pages had featured bonsai trees, large-bloom South American roses, and a wide selection of especially beautiful blooms imported from Holland, Japan, and the tropics. None of these items came cheap, and she had worried that she wouldn’t attract a sizable clientele willing to pay a premium for quality.

Her worries had proven to be entirely unfounded. Sunrise Flowers had struggled for only a few short months—months that hadn’t seemed so short at the time—before word of mouth brought a stream of customers to her door. Though Annie would never be rich, she seemed unlikely to starve. She had made it. She was her own boss, and prospering.

Success had proved infinitely more shocking than failure would have been. Perhaps, she sometimes thought, a guardian angel—one with a firm grasp of accounting principles—was watching over her.